One of the assignments that I had when I
was in middle school was drawing a friend-portrait. The serious problem I
realized of drawing a portrait of someone is that it is not the matter of
skills but just hating everything one drew from hair to neck. No matter how
much I tried, the person in the picture was just a completely different person
from what I drew. Even though the drawing did resemble some of original’s
features, there was something essential missing from the portrait. There was
something in one self that I couldn’t translate them into colors and curves but
without it, the portrait was dead. It lacked the art, so it lacked the beauty. Only
a very skilled artist would be able to translate the very essential of the
beauty.. but how and where do artist find those beauty? In the preface of the
book, it’s stated that “To reveal art and conceal the artist is art’s aim”.
According to this statement, to show the pure beauty of the image and wipe off
the vestige of personal reflection of the artist is art’s aim. Ironically, I
believe that the artist finds the beauty of a person not to the pure beauty of
the sitter but inside himself.
While Basil goes on and on about Dorian’s
beauty and the inspiration Dorian gives to Basil, I could interpret the passage
in 2 ways. First way is that Dorian is the symbol of beauty, which the artist
aims for in their art. That’s why Basil can’t resist Dorian and realize that he
and Dorian was meant to be. However for the other interpretation, I thought
Dorian may be the narcissist part of Basil. Basil says that he put too much in
himself in Dorian’s portrait. Artist tries to find the pure beauty and get the
inspiration directly from it, but I thought maybe it’s the other way around –
artist tries to find the beauty in himself. That’s why Basil wants to keep
Dorian as a secret, the pure beauty and inspiration in him that’s fragile and
young.
Human is an extremely selfish creature.
Take an example of looking at a photo. While sorting out the photos, people
concentrate solely on themselves, not the people walking beside them or others.
Out of politeness, they remark about how Jane looks great in this picture and
etc, but the most important part of sorting out the picture is to sort out one self
from numerous photos. I think it’s the same with looking at an art piece. The
reason why people admire art is because they want to see their own beauty in
it. Probably that’s another reason why Basil couldn’t help putting himself into
Dorian’s portrait. He selfishly wanted Dorian, the symbol of pure beauty to be
one of his own self, the desire to fake his own self to Dorian’s beauty or
maybe reflect the narcissist part in himself that he wanted to conceal.
The book seemed to talk much about beauty, but still I can’t grasp
the entire meaning of the word, beauty. Beauty is such an abstract thing. It
just exists. Beauty is not the tool but could be the goal in itself, the desire
of human nature. Coming to think of it, human is the only animal on earth whose
sole purpose could be beauty. In Discovery film, we don’t see a lion in the
middle of his meal suddenly stop eating due to a beautiful sunset view. We don’t
see a bird trying to sing more beautifully in order to create art, not to
attract mate. Human is special in that way that they are lone creature who can
admire beauty itself. In that way, Dorian is a very symbolic person in the
book. He could be the sole purpose, the power, and the mere existence of human
desire.
While I was reading Chapter
1, I just had more time so I went on reading the book until I reached chapter
4. The book reminded me of Faust as it progressed but in the beginning of
chapter 1 and 2, it reminded more of Hesse’s ‘Narzib und Goldmund’. Dorian, the
Goldmund realizes his own beauty, nature and entirely different life in himself
while talking to Harry, the Narzib. Goldmund gets more and more corrupted in
the book, so do Faust – well, spoiler alert – Dorian also seems to get
seriously corrupted as the book goes on. I wonder if Dorian is ever going to be
saved in the end like Faust. That, I need to read on to know the answer.
